A World in Need of Poets

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.

By Usman Iqtidar

Around the world, the aftermath of disasters is often described using data and refined talking points. The number of homes destroyed, areas affected, or dollars pledged becomes the language of crisis. But data and well-crafted messages alone don’t always tell the complete picture. More importantly, they don’t always inspire action.

Affected people are more than numbers, and destroyed homes are more than a mound of debris. We need storytellers who can translate devastation into empathy and urgency. We need narratives that cut through the noise and saturated social timelines – that can really highlight why the crisis deserves attention.

“Maybe when the world seems to be ending, it needs poets.”

This line from Mohammad Hanif’s piece in the New Yorker on the 2022 devastating floods in Pakistan rings true. I was on the ground in Islamabad, supporting communications for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This was precisely what we were trying to do – be poets amid a disaster.

We were holed up in our office, wordsmithing the impact on the ground. We were brainstorming ways to illustrate the scale of the disaster. What does a third of the country underwater mean for the people living through it? Why should the world care? How should we magnify the shared threat of climate change? The need to make the world feel the weight of the crisis drove these questions.

Human stories remain a key element. A voice, an unfiltered emotion, an eyewitness account – these are the elements that resonate the most. Today, in Gaza, where entire communities are holding on to the hope of peace, a personal story carries more weight than any press release.

Pulitzer prize-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha’s essays, also in The New Yorker, are a powerful and sobering illustration. His work, according to the Pulitzer Board, portrayed the “physical and emotional carnage in Gaza” and “combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience”.

Reaching beyond devastating numbers around the needs and impacts on the ground, expert analysis, and eyewitness accounts, Abu Toha also highlights the humanity of the place that was his home – the streets, the cafes, the landmarks, the people – sharing how war spares no one.

He brings to light how, at the end of the day, it is the small and great joys of life, such as one’s love for soccer, friendly neighbourhood banter, the birth of a nephew, cooking rituals with family or breaking bread that are eviscerated in a conflict. His intimate accounts capture what conventional communications around crises often fail to cover. He helps the world see that buying a bag of flour – perhaps a dreaded weekend chore for the reader – is a prized possession worth a fortune and a day-long wait in a line.

Abu Toha doesn’t just document the disaster; he makes others feel its weight and consequences. He cites this line from a Palestinian proverb in his essay, Requiem for a refugee camp: “If they bring back to you the old cafés, who will bring back to you the old friends?” It captures perfectly what is at stake and what has been lost. Even after a ceasefire, the community would never be the same again. It also shows why it is so critical to prevent any further destruction.

In our world, the need for poets has never been greater. The fast-changing climate and frequency of disasters mean few people and places could remain untouched. Last year was the hottest year on record. Latin America saw one of the most active hurricane seasons in 2024. Drought and floods are more recurrent. With our planet warming up fast, this trend is only going to get worse. As one prescient viral tweet goes: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”

Similarly, conflict, war, and displacement are at the highest levels they have been in decades. Like Abu Toha, who now lives with his family in Syracuse, New York, over 122 million people across the world have been forced to flee from their homes. The annual monetary cost of meeting humanitarian needs – just essential lifesaving support like food and medicine – is reaching $50 billion. Unfortunately, resources and funding are drying up at the same speed as countries look inward amid changing political realities.

All these factors underscore why we need effective storytellers to bridge distances and connect the readers to the realities on the ground.

Maybe our world needs poets now more than ever: not just the words, but in the way we capture the rawness of the crisis, the resilience of survivors, and the imperative for action.

Helping to communicate what UNDP does after catastrophic events, ranging from supporting partners in providing lifesaving aid to working with governments to help communities get back to normalcy, I have seen how vital it is to make the human experience visible. It is through this that we can understand why the world should care.

Increasingly, we have also seen that this role of ‘the poet’ is not just limited to journalists and communications professionals. With cellphones in their hands and social media at their fingertips, many people are already doing the job of chronicling and raising awareness about disasters.

Whether by choice or simply by virtue of being caught up in the middle of the action, they are bringing in new and innovative strategies. During the Türkiye-Syria earthquake, for instance, survivors live-streamed from under rubble, triggering faster response. On social media, ordinary citizens are launching hashtags, digital petitions, and fundraisers – something we have seen during the Los Angeles fires all the way to the floods in Nigeria. From drone-footage to microblogging, they help bring much-needed perspectives from the ground.

We need to work closely with them for more effective and personal coverage of crises. By collaborating with local experts and affected people, amplifying their perspectives and integrating their messages into our campaigns, we can make communications from the front lines more powerful.

Maybe our world needs poets now more than ever: not just the words, but in the way we capture the rawness of the crisis, the resilience of survivors, and the imperative for action.

And finally, something uniquely essential strong storytellers and poets have offered through history, especially in dire times, is hope.

The underlying current in how a story is told is its power to shape thinking, drive action, and set the course for change. In a fragmented world, we need storytellers who can help people believe that better is still possible. After winning the Pulitzer, Abu Toha wrote on X, “I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Let it bring hope. Let it be a tale.”

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The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.